page_title: Blue Mountains Line
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Blue Mountains Line / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Blue Mountains Line north of Lithgow station
context_page_description: The Blue Mountains Line is an inter urban commuter rail service operated by NSW TrainLink serving the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, Australia. The line travels west from Sydney to the major town of Katoomba and on to Mount Victoria, Lithgow and Bathurst. Mount Victoria is the terminus for most electric services, but some services terminate at Lithgow instead. 2 Express services per day in each direction, known as the Bathurst Bullet, extend to the regional city of Bathurst, which is supplemented by road coaches connecting Bathurst to Lithgow. Due to electrification limits at Lithgow, the Bathurst Bullet is run using the Endeavour railcars, which operate on diesel. The Blue Mountains Line operates over a mostly duplicated section of the Main Western line. As such, the tracks are also traversed by the Central West XPT, Outback Xplorer and Indian Pacific passenger services and by freight trains.
context_section_description: The Blue Mountains line is a section of the Main Western line which opened in 1868.  The line was built with gradients as steep as 1 in 33 (3%) and curves as sharp as 8 chains (160m).  Most of the curves were eased to 12 chains (240m) with duplication.
  The line originally ascended the eastern and descended the western sides of the Blue Mountains via a series of zig-zag track sections. The eastern zig zag was by passed by a tunnel in 1892 and the western zig zag (once a tourist railway) was bypassed in 1910 with the Ten Tunnels Deviation.
caption: View immediately north of Lithgow station. This is the limit of electric services on the Blue Mountains Line.
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